Speech recognition technology allows a user of a computing device to make inputs via speech commands, rather than via a keyboard or other peripheral device input device. One difficulty shared by different speech recognition systems is discerning intended speech inputs from other received sounds, including but not limited to background noise, background speech, and speech from a current system user that is not intended to be an input.
Various methods have been proposed to discern intended speech inputs from other sounds. For example, some speech input systems require a user to say a specific command, such as “start listening,” before any speech will be accepted and analyzed as an input. However, such systems may still be susceptible to background noise that randomly matches recognized speech patterns and that therefore may be interpreted as input. Such “false positives” may result in a speech recognition system performing actions not intended by a user, or performing actions even when no users are present.